Find Good Local Plumbers
It never fails for the average homeowner… At some point or another you’re going to need to find good local plumbers to bid on a plumbing emergency at home. So what do you do when you know you need a plumber but you don’t know how to go about finding and hiring a good local plumber for your plumbing emergency? Have no fear we got you covered here at FindLocalPlumbers.org. Read the following article and discover for yourself how to find and hire good local plumbers and how to screen and pre-qualify plumbers to ensure that you hire a good one.
One of the first tings you have to realize if you’re looking for a good plumber is that you’re going to have to look at and evaluate several plumbers before you actually find a good one. We recommend you start with at least 3-7 plumbers that you can pre-qualify prior to having them bid on your project. You want to pre-qualify plumbers prior to having them bid on your project because you want to make sure you’re looking at comparable bids when you do have at least three plumbers bid on your project. The bidding process will not work if the bids are from plumbers of varying experience.
For example if you have some plumbing professionals with 10+ years of experience and then you add some rookie plumbers to the mix there’s obviously going to be some type of fluctuation in the bids you receive from those two plumbers from different ends of the spectrum. You’re going to get some really high bids and some really low bids and if you do what most people you’re going to go with the rookie plumber with virtually no experience because he give you the lowest bid… but see going with the lowest bid isn’t necessarily a problem when all of the bids you receive and review are from qualified plumbers.
Most people begin their search by asking their friends, family members and neighbors. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of some of the social networking websites out there like Facebook; more and more folks these days are tapping into their social networks to find good local handymen! Other reliable sources for referrals are real estate agents, general contractors, your local home improvement store and plumbing materials suppliers. All of these people work routinely with plumbers so they may be able to share some vital data with you if you ask nicely. The point is to put together a decent size list of plumbers so you ca begin to screen and pre-qualify these plumbers. And from that list you will choose the best two or three plumbers to come in and give you a quote on your repair project.
After you’ve put together your list you can get started with the screening process. I like to get as much of this work done online as possible since it’s primarily preliminary work to weed out some of the less reliable plumbers.
A good place to start is by checking to see if the plumber you’re looking at has a license to operate in the state. To check to see if a plumber has a license just do a search on Google for your local state licensing board. for instance here in the state of California I would go to the website http://www.cslb.ca.gov/. And from there you will want to look for the page that says “check a license”. Again in California it looks like this: https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/CheckLicense.aspx.
State licensed contractors have to undergo a background check where they are finger printed and they are also given general competency test so checking for a license is a good place to start looking for a qualified candidate. Alternatively if you don’t want to go through all that you can also use this website (http://www.contractors-license.org/ to see if the plumber you’re evaluating has a license.
Along with looking for existing reviews and complaints it’s also a good idea to check for existing complaints. One of the first places you’ll want to check out is your local state licensing board. This is one of the first places a homeowner will go to file a complaint so it’s definitely a good place to start to look for valid complaints. Another place you can check out is the Better Business Bureau at www.bbb.org. And finally you can also check on the website Rip Off Report.com.
Along the same lines as above you’ll also want to research each plumber individually. I suggest you start off by doing a search on Google for the plumbers name or business name. In this exercise you’re in the hunt for reviews and feedback from past clients. Google in particular is really good about returning results with reviews when doing searches for contractors and service providers. If you can’t find anything on Google you’ll also want to look into the individual local websites that typically provide reviews and feedback. The best websites for this are City Search, Insider pages and Yelp.
Something else you’ll want to look into when evaluating plumbers is there place of business and how long they’ve been in business. The longer a plumber has been in business, generally speaking, the more reliable and competent he is. A more experienced plumber is typically also a better option because there should be more feedback and reviews available for you to check out. Regarding the place of business though, look for a plumber that has an established place of business and address in your community. Look for a plumber that has a local phone number and that has been serving your community for at least a few years. All of these things reduce the chances of you hiring a bad plumber.
Once you’ve looked into all of these things it’s a good idea to rank and rate all of the remaining plumbers and put together a list of plumbers that you’d like to have bid on your project.
When hiring a plumber to do work on your house it is critical that he be properly insured. General Liability and Worker’s Compensation are absolutely essential. The plumber needs to have General Liability insurance in the event that he causes damage to any of your property. Worker’s Compensation will protect you and your property if any of the plumber’s employees get injured in your home while working on your job.
Another thing you’ll definitely want to speak to your prospective plumbers about is the subject of references. References are great because you get to hear from other people what they think about the plumber you’re considering hiring. make sure to ask your prospective plumbers for references and then make sure to call them! This is absolutely the best way for you to find out if the plumber you want to hire is worth the price hes trying to charge you.
Don’t just ask for referrals though… take it a step further and ask the plumber to help you get in touch with some of his past clients. If you’re looking to hire a plumber for a larger job, you may even want to ask the plumber if he’s working on any other jobs at the moment so you can stop by and get a feel for the quality of his work.
Plumbing emergencies are a huge pain in the backside there’s no doubt about that… hiring a good plumber on the other hand though shouldn’t be. Follow the tips above and you’ll be well on your way to finding and hiring good local plumbers for your next project!